


Justice Obscured

by Deannie



Series: One Day at Red Cliff [5]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen, Period-Typical Racism, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5150513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have seen explosions from closer than I have ever cared to, but even as I’m blown back to smack hard against the cliff wall, the spring lapping at my boots, this feels different. I lose sight of JD and Ezra as the wagon full of dynamite blows to pieces, shaking the ground and causing the wagon our boys just left to take flight toward the boulders. The shaking doesn’t stop as the wood chips settle—they dance on the dirt as a rumble thrums through my bones. Red dust sifts down from above, and I cannot help but pray.</p><p>Dear Lord, let us all survive this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Justice Obscured

_“There are times when a bird is just a bird.”_

“Like hell, Ezra,” I mutter as I survey the scene. My rifle is hot in my hand and I hope I have enough ammunition left. 

We knew Goff’s crew was bigger than we’d been seeing, but shoved up against this cliff, we’re at a decided disadvantage. Ezra and JD have been pinned down for a while, and while I trust the two of them to take care of themselves, eventually, that wagon’s going to be reduced to kindling. 

And Nathan’s out for blood, damn him. I’ve never seen him fail to turn the other cheek, but Goff is worse than anything we’ve come up against—at least since the Seminole village. And even then, Anderson was out for gold first, blood second. Goff just kills black people because he likes it. 

Nathan had better not give him a reason to kill him, too. But watching the shadow of our healer as he tries to sneak around toward the copse of trees Goff is using as a base, I don’t think Nathan’s listening much to reason. 

“Chris!” I call, bowing to the inevitable. I’m going to have to go after our wayward man before Nathan does something he’ll regret. Chris looks over at me from his place next to Vin and nods when I motion that I’ll circle around and try to meet up with Nathan. 

“JD! EZRA! Get DOWN” 

Buck’s hollering and I look up as Vin and Chris do the same. It’s a fatal error. 

There doesn’t seem to be one particular gun that fires the bullet, just a roar of too many of them, and suddenly Vin’s thrown back hard. I make sure Chris is there to pull him to safety and I run. Buck’s still shouting, heading away from the haven he’d found behind the boulders, right for Ezra and JD. 

“GET DOWN!” he screams again. I can hear him, but I’m sure they can’t. It takes me a minute to find the reason for his sudden attack of stupid and I curse when I see it. 

Goff's men have stopped trying to take us out one by one. They’re aiming for the other wagon, the one about twenty yards from where our boys are hunkered down. They’re aiming for the _dynamite_ in that other wagon... 

Dear God, JD and Ezra'll be blown to pieces! 

I run faster, trying to get behind them, hoping for a shot at McAuliffe. If any of Goff's men can hit it, it'll be him. If I can take him out, buy us time... 

With the spring at my back, I finally have a clear shot. Ezra’s heard Buck, I think, or figured it out himself. He’s shoving a resisting JD ahead of him, his face full of anger and annoyance as he heads them both for the boulders between the wagons and me. I raise my rifle and sight for a shining grey muzzle in the trees in the distance— 

And hellfire rains down. 

I have seen explosions from closer than I have ever cared to, but even as I’m blown back to smack hard against the cliff wall, the spring lapping at my boots, this feels different. I lose sight of JD and Ezra as the wagon full of dynamite blows to pieces, shaking the ground and causing the wagon our boys just left to take flight toward the boulders. The shaking doesn’t stop as the wood chips settle—they dance on the dirt as a rumble thrums through my bones. Red dust sifts down from above, and I cannot help but pray. 

Dear Lord, let us all survive this. 

I try to catch sight of each of my brothers, fix them in my mind, so that I can find them again. Chris has hold of Vin, and while they are down, they are moving. Buck is just down, but far enough away, I hope, to escape the worst of it. Not right up against it like I am. And then, God help me, I look up. 

The entire cliff face is coming down, too, it seems. There’s a rush of air that precedes the tide of red stone and dirt and I cower back into the crevasse God made for the spring. The tide passes by my location, mostly, burying the places where I last saw four of my friends like a tidal wave consuming the shore. 

I try to take a breath as the wave seems to subside, but God has other plans and I’m suddenly sliding down, the creek bed giving way beneath me as the cliff face does above. My knee twists viciously under me and my face is covered first by a weight of coarse fabric, and then by a torrent of water. I try to inhale, but my mouth is sealed tight. I can’t breathe. Dear God, _I can’t breathe!_

  

—And suddenly, I don’t have to. 

The red and ruined world around me melts away, the pain goes with it, and I’m standing calm and peaceful in a quiet glade. Gates I know are Heaven’s are closed before me. Closed. 

I suppose I knew they would be. 

“You think you belong here, son?” booms a voice I have not heard in almost twenty years. I look beyond the silver filigree of the gate and see my father as he approaches. 

“I can’t imagine I’ve sinned so grievously that the Lord won’t take pity on me, even now,” I say. I won’t speak the other thought I feel: If you are there, I can’t have sinned so badly that I am worse than you. 

“Pity,” he growls. “That was all there was left for you, son. In the end. God doesn’t pity—he rewards the faithful and casts out the damned.” 

Oh Lord. “You never did say much I needed to hear,” I tell him, turning away and looking for the others I expect to be waiting here with me. “JD!?” I call. No god would ever bar his way to the Promised Land. “Ezra!?” No matter what sins we all (even he himself) think he’s guilty of, Ezra Standish was a man who deserved God’s mercy and his just reward. 

“They aren’t welcome here!” 

My father’s voice is suddenly colder and more evil than it ever was in life, and I realize my mistake. “‘And through his shrewdness, he will cause deceit to succeed by his influence,’” I whisper, knowing it is not my father at all, merely the Devil, seeking to draw me in with his trickery. The gates burn with sudden hellfire and the image of my father grows beyond his Earthly size, crouching demonically as the flaming iron swings open to let Satan out. 

And me in. 

“They aren’t welcome, Josiah Sanchez,” the demon bellows greedily. “But you are!” 

I fall back, trying to flee as he approaches— 

  

—and a sharp smack rocks my head. I sit up hard, screaming. Every inch of me aches, my knee on fire and my breathing edged in brimstone. 

“You’re okay, Josiah.” Buck’s worried voice cuts through the horror and I realize the air is full of plain red dust. “You’re all right. Rest a minute now. Catch your breath.” 

Sweet Jesus. “Thought I’d never have that luxury again,” I rasp painfully, trying to fill lungs that have gone too long without. I fight to shake off the mockery of my father’s voice and the bone-deep terror. There’re are lost sheep to find. “JD and Ezra?” 

Buck shakes his head, his eyes full of fear and some dark memory. “Don’t know about Chris and Vin, neither,” he admits, as if he himself is somehow to blame. 

“I saw Vin go down,” I tell him, trying to pull myself upright. The black water still holds to me, though I’m out of the spring, and I glance a grateful look at Buck as he hauls me to my feet. Ah, sweet air! “Don’t know how bad,” I continue. They were moving. I know that much. And Chris would die before he’d let something happen to Vin. My very soul is shaking, but it all stills as I finally look up and see what dynamite’s fury has wrought. “Dear Lord….” 

“Don’t think the Lord had much to do with this, Preacher,” Buck mutters bitterly. The whole valley is awash in destruction, a tormented sea, frozen in time and death. 

No, dear God, not death. Not for them. 

“Nathan?” I whisper, though I know he’d be here if he were able. 

Buck knows it, too. “Reckon he’d be helping dig us all out if he was here. Either he’s following Goff or...” 

No. Even as bitter and angry and far from himself as that damned bigot has brought him in the last few weeks, Nathan is still himself. “He wouldn’t’ve left us willingly.” 

One long deep breath does nothing to calm my lungs or my heart, but it sets my soul aflame with the need to move. I cannot watch this frozen sea and wonder who is screaming under the waves. Buck is lost, standing in silence and confusion. I clap him on the back and try to wrestle him away from his immobility. “God helps those who help themselves, Buck,” I tell him, smiling to keep from screaming. “Let’s take a look around.” 

The world collapses as I step with that wrenched knee, and Buck’s hand is on my shoulder as my ass is suddenly on the ground. “Take a rest,” he tells me gently. “Get your legs back under you.” 

He rises and I see him trying to remember the valley before the storm. His gaze rocks back and forth between the cliff face and the pile of rocks in the center of the destruction and I can hear him trying to decide: his little brother or his big one. 

“Give me a minute and I’ll go for Chris and Vin,” I tell him, marshalling my strength and studying the trio of mounds that may be all there is of both our youngest and our blackest sheep. “Ezra and JD were moving toward the rocks behind their wagon last I saw them, so there’s a chance they hit shelter before the blast.” A chuckle grows in my chest as I find my bearings and try to pull myself to my feet again. “God watches over fools and children…” 

Buck’s smile and his indomitable optimism, bloom before me, if weakly. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which,” he says quietly. 

Dear Lord, please let us have many more years to try to figure out that puzzle. 

**** 

Prophet is all but sleeping as he follows Pony’s tail down the Lost Trail. Perdidos. 

Aren’t we all? 

Chris certainly is. He has kept himself wrapped tight in his bitterness since we pulled him and Vin from that cave in the cliff face, knowing—because his life has taught him not to wish—that he has lost at least two friends today. He’s riding in grim silence now, to try to prevent losing another. I have chosen a different path: hope. 

We’ll see how that turns out for me. 

In the dark of our trek toward what I _hope_ is Goff’s camp, my mind rolls over and over the images in my vision in the spring. Yogis immerse themselves deep in the Ganges, hoping for purification and clarity. I can’t find a clarity I much find palatable in the vision of Satan, wrapped in my father’s sins, striving to suck me into Hell. I am not a good man, and neither was my father, but I had hoped God would be more merciful than that. That I have redeemed myself at least a bit in these last few years. 

“We’re nearly there,” Chris whispers, gesturing into the pitch before us. 

No. No, not pitch black at all. There’s firelight against the cliff face… 

A spate of gunfire—almost accidental—barks out and shakes us both. 

“Go around to the cliff side,” Chris orders, spurring Pony into a gallop. “Find Nathan!” 

Prophet sprints around the circle of woods that make this such a welcoming campsite, and I fetch up against the cliffside and ground tie him before creeping to the edge of the clearing. Chris’s peacemaker breaks the night across the way, joining forces with at least three other guns to create a jangling chaos. 

Through the trees, I see four men fall in such quick succession that I know it can’t be only Chris firing. Even he’s not that fast. “Nathan,” I call quietly, not wanting to give away my position or his, but suddenly desperate to find my friend. “Nathan, where are you?” 

Stupid. My right hand erupts in fire and I drop to the ground, firing toward the shooter and thanking God I shoot with my left. 

The man cries out and falls, but I hear Chris bellow from the other side of the clearing, then more gunfire, confusing in the black. The sound of a single horse taking off into the night isn’t joined by Chris’s gun, and I wrap a handkerchief around my hand to stem the bleeding, tying it off before I run for the fire too far away across the clearing. 

“You killed ‘em, you son of a bitch.” The accusation freezes me solid. Dear God, Nathan sounds like Death himself. So far from his nature. I crouch down, trying to pinpoint the direction of him. 

“Made a hell of a bang, didn’t it?” McAuliffe’s words are nails in his coffin. I don’t think he rightly appreciates that yet. A single shot rings out, and McAuliffe’s scream is loud and long. That’s not right… 

“Nathan!” I call strongly, moving toward McAuliffe’s panicked breathing in the growing dawn. I know my words aren’t reaching Nathan in whatever Hell he’s in. I finally spy McAuliffe in the dirt by the trees. Too far away. Where the hell is Chris? 

“Can't finish it, can you?” McAuliffe taunts, his voice rough and brittle with pain. The fool. Christ, Nathan, don’t do this. The knee I wrenched in the spring at Red Cliff buckles under me and I fall cursing as McAuliffe’s voice rises an octave in fear. “Just kill me, boy," he begs. I would beg too, hearing Nathan’s voice. "Go on—do it!” 

“NATHAN!” I claw my way up to my feet and hobble toward him, wishing I could run. 

“I ain’t nobody’s boy.” 

Another shot rings out and McAuliffe shrieks louder than before. “God damn you, nigger!” 

I’m finally there, my knee barely keeping me up. And Nathan _isn’t_ here. I can see that. He’s somewhere bitter and lost, the tears of slaves echoing in his ears as he stares without expression at the broken bigot on the ground. 

“Nathan!” I try again, a hand out toward him, though I doubt he even knows I’m here. 

“He deserves this, Josiah.” The whisper is guttural, pried from lips that do not know the secret they’re speaking. 

“He deserves to rot in Hell, Nathan,” I agree softly. I edge closer as Chris appears out of the trees, a hand to the back of his head and eyes squinting in pain. “But not by your hand.” 

With Chris to cover me, I take hold of the gun, breathing in relief as it slides out of Nathan’s unresisting hand. The rest of him resists in spades, and Chris darts forward as Nathan’s powerful hands grip my arms to bruising. 

But his voice… “Josiah?” Oh, Nathan! The voice of a child sold at livestock, a boy without hope of rescue. 

Chris helps me catch him as he collapses. I land on my injured knee and cry out helplessly. McAuliffe, poor soul, is still conscious, but he’s beyond any of us right now. Chris kneels beside me, and I urge the sun to rise more quickly so I can get a better look at Nathan’s injuries. 

“He’s shot,” Chris supplies. “His leg.” 

I nod at the blood on Chris’s collar and he grimaces. “Goff. Cracked me in the back of the skull and got away. Coward.” He looks at me carefully. “You gonna be okay with him while I scrounge what I can?” 

I look down at Nathan’s face, at the blood caked across it and the lines of anger and hopelessness. 

“I have him, Chris,” I promise. “Get what you can.” He nods, and I shift slightly, chains tinkling like broken glass as Nathan shifts with me. “And find the damn keys!” 

****** 

“The merciful man does good to his own soul,” I say, crouching down beside McAuliffe, who is conscious enough now to flinch away from the Death’s Head smile I give him. I unwrap the bandages on his hand, ignoring the pain in my own. Mine will heal—his will not. “But he that is cruel troubles his own flesh.” I shake the bottle of bourbon I took from Chaucer’s saddlebag at him before I pour a liberal dose on the wound. He whimpers. “Let that be a lesson to you,” I tell him truthfully. 

“Damn darkie ought to hang for this,” he grates at me, shaking with the pain and shock of his injuries. The knee might heal, if he lets Nathan at it. “Where’s my justice, huh, preacher?” 

I rewrap the wound and rise in the growing darkness, my knee a flame without light. “Likely not in Heaven, my friend,” I reply, suppressing a shudder of my own. My father and the brimstone gates float before me and I shake my head to banish them. “Now shut up and get some sleep before someone metes out any more justice around here.” 

I look across camp with a smile. Ezra is drugged and sleeping, thank God, and JD won’t be far behind. Nathan stands up from his place beside Chris at the fire and looks toward Vin, who’s dozing lazily now all his brothers are safe and together again. Buck’s headed toward Chris and wonder what that discussion will be like. It’d be nice if they keep the yelling quiet. Nathan’s eyes predictably lock with mine, and I walk away from the prisoner, my nod inviting him to do the same. 

“How’s he doing?” he asks worriedly. McAuliffe is twitching fretfully, trying to find a position that’ll invite some sleep. 

Oh Nathan… He’s feeling guilty as all hell for what he’s done, and worried about the health of a man who’d rather see him dead than let him help. 

“You are a wonder, Nathan Jackson,” I say quietly. He looks at me in confusion and it raises a chuckle in me. 

“Ain’t nothing funny here, Josiah,” he murmurs painfully. The guilt bows him down already. It’ll crush him if he lets it. 

“‘These were destroyed by the doom of the gods and their own hard actions,’” I pronounce. He glares at me, but lets me continue. “If you had never seen Willy Harker hanging from that tree—a man you told just a month ago that Four Corners was a place a black man could make a good life—what would you have done?” 

“You can’t tell me that it’s fair or it’s right because McAuliffe is a bigot and a murderer,” he growls at me, turning from me into the night. 

I grab his arm and hold him fast. “You’re right. I can’t. Because it isn’t right, Nathan.” The horror in his eyes is one I know too well, and I wish he never had to feel it. “But it _is_ because, whether you found it or not, you were seeking justice.” 

“This ain’t justice.” 

I snort. “Only God finds justice, my friend.” The image of my father fades into the pain of memory and I take a deep breath. Whatever justice I may face, it’s God’s to set right. My mind torturing itself won’t solve anything. “And even he has to search damn hard for it sometimes.” 

Nathan stands in the darkness, his eyes on McAuliffe. “I would have killed him if you hadn’t stopped me.” 

“No you wouldn’t have,” I correct him, seeing the truth of it in the set of his shoulders. “That’s why I stopped you.” 

I take a step toward him and my knee gives out a little so that my hand falls harder on his shoulder than I meant it to, causing a groan to eke forth as the bullet graze stretches and burns. Breaks him out of his stupor, though, and he holds me up, pegging me with that exasperated look that reminds you he’s a doctor in all but title. 

“What the hell did you do to yourself now, old man?” he grouses. 

I chuckle, letting him lead me toward the fire. “Hell is just about right, my friend.” 

But thank God, we all lived to escape it another day. 

******  
the end


End file.
